Tag Archives: lifestyles

#17 You’re Okay Just the Way You Are

16 Jun

I think there’s a moment in some butch wives lives (boy, try saying that 5 times real fast – wives lives, wives lives, wives….oh, never mind) when one’s attempts at appropriate social decorum may come into question.  I had one such moment the other night while investigating a loud noise in our yard.  Our dog started barking in the middle of the night which woke me up.  Not an unusual occurrence in our household, but a consistently loud one nonetheless.  I got out of bed, opened the back door, and wandered onto the porch for a look around, closing the door behind me.  As soon as I left the door space I felt it creep up my back and neck -  the realization I had just locked myself out.

Now normally this is not a major issue.  Planning ahead for contingencies, we have provisions for just such a situation because we have locked ourselves out several times in the past.  But in this case, I was drowsy, half-naked and bare footed, and assumed I would have to come around the house and into the front door to get back in. Immediately the thought of going out the back gate with just my t-shirt on and a rather exposed bare bottom seemed, well, unseemly.  My first steps were to check again and make sure I couldn’t break into my door, which, of course I couldn’t, but I had to try.

My mind started racing.  The thought of someone seeing an older grey haired woman, bare bottomed and without shoes hopping and yelping along the side of a darkened house at 3 in the morning could be humiliating for a truly butch wife.  Right? Could this situation be cause for losing my ‘Butch Wife Extraordinaire’ card for all time.  What if a policeman caught me trying to get into my house?  Would going to jail for breaking and entering really be a good idea while wearing only a t-shirt and no bottoms?

Therefore, I did the only thing I could under the circumstances.  I turned on the dog and blamed him for closing the door in the first place!  No actually I tried to find a place to sit and think about the best way to avoid the social humility of walking up our street half-naked.  This turned out to be harder than one might think, since it gets foggy around here at night and finding a dry spot to sit on that avoids the possibility of splinters wasn’t easy.  It’s not like pulling off a thoughtful pose like Rodin’s The Thinker or anything, but I was able to situate each cheek just so nothing got pinched or bruised on the only dry spot I could find.

Do real butch wives actually have these kinds of thoughts or issues I wondered.  After all, we’ve all done something dumb like this, right?  Anyway, the avoidance of public humiliation was achieved when I remembered I hadn’t locked the upstairs deck doors.  Upon inspection sure enough I could get in without running half-naked through the neighborhood and felt safe and warm once my bare bottom was inside.

But the whole situation brought up a question for me in the end (no pun intended here).  How do we learn shame?  I saw a movie once where the parent asked his gay son, “When did I teach you shame?” when the son was reluctant to come out to his family.  They knew he was gay and loved him anyway but somehow this son couldn’t accept it in himself.

Being caught in the cold with less than is generally accepted clothing on reminded me that shame IS taught.  I like to think the use of ‘shameful’ is more directed at what one does perhaps rather than for who someone is.  However, some think anyone who is not like themselves must at their very core be a ’shame to mankind.’  Can you imagine growing up with the knowledge that your family and those who are supposed to love you unconditionally think you are a ‘shame to mankind?’  Wow.  Can’t say I know any one person with that much power to impact all of mankind, except maybe John Lennon.  But that’s just me.  I vote for the elimination of ‘shame’ from our social lexicon.   What d’ya say?

Butch Wife Tip #17

Question: Do you realize how cold and wet outdoor furniture gets in the middle of the night?  I do now, and caution all to check the targeted sitting apparatus with your hand before plopping down on it with a bare bottom after 1am in San Francisco.  For those of you who simply MUST plan ahead, ensure your sleeping t-shirts are long enough to cover your butt when you sit down.  Improper t-shirt length considerations could someday lead to handcuffed arrests for indecent exposure.  I’m just saying…and if you ARE caught wearing less than you’d prefer, stand proud and tall with confidence, because you are okay just as you are.  (You could try whistling but then that might not look good given the circumstances. )

Julie Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

Tags: , , , , , ,

#11A – Femme Wife Response to Patio Surfing

24 May

And now a perspective from the femme wife’s point of view – ok yes I was towel surfing on a Caribbean island patio shortly after our lives were threatened by a tropical storm however, there was a VERY good reason for this. We had cleared (at my insistence and some general hurricane advice) all the furniture off the lanai. As we prepared to leave I just didn’t have it in me to have our nice French hosts come home to find an empty space where their outside living room used to be. So being the good girl scout that I am I was wiping down the patio in the most efficient way I could think of (i.e. towels on my shuffling feet) while my wife sat by saying, “I told you we didn’t have to clear everything off”. She was right and I was wrong (yes dear I said it!) but I didn’t feel I should have to do all the work just because I had chosen to follow the National Weather Service’s advice and not hers! I was madder than a wet hen about my solo efforts and rather than talk things out like a grown-up I chose to show my displeasure by scowling at my wife each time I shuffled past the window.   Finally, realizing that my imitation of a pissed off locomotive was getting nowhere and I was making a fool of myself , I calmed down and went in to apologize for my childish behavior. I’d been so unpleasant (and yes dear unreasonable) I assumed I would be met with a well-earned cold shoulder. As I began my mea copa Julie could no longer contain her glee and burst into good-natured giggles at my performance. As it turned out we both had a good laugh and to this day we often diffuse marital spats with imitations of the “Femme Wife” shuffle………..

Femme Wife Tip#1:

If you love each other, and don’t take yourself too seriously, even when you’re wrong things can turn out right.

Mindy – Femme Wife Extraordinaire

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

#11 Patio Surfing Anyone?

24 May

Patio Surfing

My wife and I were traveling last year in the Caribbean and after a wonderful vacation were getting ready to come home.  The neighbors close by told us a hurricane was on the way and all flights were cancelled at the moment.  Having never been through a hurricane we began to strategize about exactly how to get ‘ready’ for one.  Once we agreed on things that could fly, things that could leak, or things that could be eaten or drunk while waiting for a clearing in the storm, we were good to go.  Fortunately when the storm came, it only brushed by our little island and we didn’t experience a major disruption.  Just a lot of rain.

After the storm passed we started putting the ‘things’ back in place for our departure.  Needless to say there was quite a bit of water on the patio, and since the tiles were rather slick, my wife decided to dry them off with towels.  Of course, during all the tension about the storm and our survival, we decided it was the perfect time to have a disagreement.  Quite honestly at this point, I don’t even remember what we were arguing about, but I DO remember clearly how my wife decided to let me know about her displeasure.

I was sitting in the living room of the house we had been using, looking out the back sliding glass doors as my wife ‘skated’ around the patio, feet on two towels and sliding across the floor with determined strides.  I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back I saw my wife, arms pumping along her sides like train wheels, legs shuffling  back and forth like a back country skier on snow shoes, and an angry look on her face as she expressed her displeasure at what I had or had not done to piss her off.

I have to tell you, I couldn’t help myself.  The vision I was looking at just tickled my sense of humor and I began to laugh.  Of course I realized laughter was the last thing my wife might want to see from me, so I fled the room to continue my giggling out of sight.  After a few moments, she came into the bedroom where I was rolling on the floor in hysterics.  I have to admit the laughter initially pissed her off, thinking I wasn’t taking her concerns seriously.  Anyone WOULD feel that way.  But after I explained the ‘vision’ that tipped me over the giggling edge, she also began to laugh and we both ended up laughing until our sides hurt.

Butch Wife Tip @11

Here’s my point, I guess.  We all have arguments in our relationships.  For us, when we lose our sense of humor about ourselves, we lose touch with each other.   I believe a good pair of scuba fins, a funny hat, and a big hug can do wonders in smoothing over those rough times.  Skating on towels can be fun as well, but you need a flat surface.  If that doesn’t help, put yourselves in the middle of a hurricane – having your life in danger tends to put things in perspective.

Julie  Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

Tags: , , , , , ,

#5 “I’ll do the dishes, you pick up the mouse guts.”

16 May

There’s one thing I’ve learned since retiring from corporate life, and that’s house chores are NEVER done.  Unlike in business, at least the business I did, when a project came my way I knew it would get “done.”   I worked really hard on it until it was completed, installed, operating normally, or whatever term meant it was over for me.  Then I’d sit back for a time gleaming at the wonderful thing I was involved in that’s making the corporation hum like a bird day in and day out.  I was sure the same type of logic would apply at home as it did in my work.  I identify something that needs doing, (like dusting or making the bed), figure out how to do it to my wife’s satisfaction (sometimes that takes me a while), and then go about completing the tasks to get it done.  When it comes to home projects, I’ve discovered, that’s not how things go.

Household chores keep coming back.  You can’t just finish your chores.  Oh no! The little buggers sneak up on you again and again, demanding new attention as if they’d never been ’attended’ to before!  Take dusting as an example.  Those little dust bunnies, – whoever thought of that name should seek help - returning almost immediately after I’ve pushed them off all visible places on the table.  Why don’t they just stay away????  Even if I use dust spray, and don’t ask me what’s in it, the dust seems to find its way back.  The spray might keep it away for an hour or so, but just wait, it comes right back to cover every inch of anything made of matter and impossible to get at with a cloth.

And take the ‘making the bed’ chore.  I’m not exactly sure why someone decided long ago making the bed EVERY DAY was a necessary thing for us to do, but they did and now I have to.  ’Why’ I ask myself.  You’re just going to be back in it in a few hours anyway so why bother smoothing out those wrinkles from last night and making sure those pillows are lined up exactly on both sides of the bed.  Oh God, save me from this!  I have taken to making the bed while in it, and not worrying about the pillows being ‘just so.’  The trick is to start under the covers and in the middle of the bed.   Pull everything up tight under you chin, making sure they are pretty even on both sides and using your arms to smooth out any bumps.  Then just carefully slip out one side.  Voila!! made bed!  No running from one side of the bed to the other time after time.  No special little folding manuever at the end of the bed to make sure everything stays tucked in at the bottom.  (I think they call those ‘hospital corners.’)  Now, just throw the pillows on the top of the bed and you’re done.  I can do it in under 30 seconds.  Pretty good, uh?!

When it comes to cat chores, however, I would advise a compromise with your mate.  This can be a traumatic experience in our house as our cat is a mouser and doesn’t just kill those pesky, whiskered little things.   She devours them – blood, organs, bones, heads….its disgusting.  We have what we lovingly call a “Cujo” cat.  And she periodically shares parts of what she’s caught, or at least parts of what she’s decided to not eat.   She’s not too fond of rat and therefore, only takes off their heads.  As for mice, she prefers the young ones and typically we don’t find any remains.  The older mice, however, tend to get parts left behind.  We have designated a particular stair on our staircase as her ‘sacrificial alter’ as she often leaves portions of her older mouse kills on one particular step. What a love.  I can’t tell you how many times one or the other of us has headed upstairs first thing in the morning only to step on pieces of intestine languishing on our staircase and our cat sitting right there staring at us as if to say, “See?  I AM a God.”

Butch Wife Tip #5

Share your chores and divide them up based on your skills.  As an example, I do techy and financial stuff, my wife does flowers and pretty things for the house.  That’s certainly not all there is to do, so I’d suggest you get your household together, make a list, and have all participants pick the ones they can or will do.   If there is only one of you, you feel bad about assigning chores to your 2 year old, or you just can’t come to an agreement with your partner or spouse on who is going to do what each week, then hire someone.  I’m convinced those dust bunnies multiply over time and are trying to take over the world!

Julie  Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

(PS: For those of you who asked – if you want to continue to follow this blog,  just click on the “Follow” box in the upper left side of this page and WordPress will send out an email to you each time its updated.  If you get tired reading this, just unclick that same box, but I hope you don’t.  Also for those who want to leave a comment, and please do, click on the “Leave a Comment” section at the end of each posting and a blank text will open for you to write in.  Once you’ve said your peace just hit ‘Send’ and it’ll show up.)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

#4 Refrigerator Management

14 May

Recently we were sitting around a dining table with friends talking about life, and, as we picked at our food, the topic of living science experiments in our refrigerators came up.  The means by which our collective minds GOT to that topic is probably way too complicated to try to recount at this point.  Suffice to say somehow we landed here and I was astonished to find out that we are not alone in having difficulty with our ‘refrigerator management’ skills.  (That term was used by one of my close friends and I thought it appropriate to share.)

I think its best to start by acknowledging refrigerators have a life of their own.  There they sit in an auspicious place of adoration in someone’s kitchen, holding the life affirming nutrients we all need to survive.  Or at least. they provide us with something to open every 10 minutes when we are hungry, whether or not it has food worth eating in it.  You would think we, as a species, would try to name the thing, like a pet.  After all we feed it, stroke it hoping something wonderfully delicious would just pop into our stomachs when we are starving, and talk to it constantly as we are gazing into its contents.  (At least I do……….am I the only one? Oh God!)

Having acknowledged refrigerators actually live, it is important for their ongoing good health and odor they be cleaned  and organized.  When I looked at ours recently it became clear to me my wife is a fanatic. In her mind we MUST save any size of uneaten food left over from our meals.  If there is a sliver of meat, I can’t throw it to the dog as a treat!!! Oh no, as I have been scolded many times, you must NOT throw away anything edible.  (For the life of me I’m not sure why, as the food would be rotten by the time it got to all those starving children in foreign locations I generally can’t pronounce.  But for the sake of harmony in your home, I would advise you stock up on tin foil and plastic wrap.)

Refrigerator organization is more complicated than first expected.  There is often no room for tall things on the already over-crowded shelf supposedly MADE for tall things, and tilting them sideways turned out to be a disaster…..trust me on this.  Small bits of miscellaneous food in a variety of wrappings are impossible to find on those smaller shelves meant for everything else you need to keep cold.  And those little drawers at the bottom meant for vegetables??? Please…they are angled like a pyramid and, therefore, should only hold heavy stuff.  Putting leafy things in these boxes leaves you with icky, sticky green stuff that is smashed together when you close the drawer.

So today I sat in front of my refrigerator and approached its organizational problem with the same corporate acumen I’ve used in my career.  Survey the situation, make a plan, resource the effort, track the progress, and measure the results.  Sounded good when I started.  I surveyed the refrigerator and noted two primary issues right off the bat.  One, we tend to place everything toward the front of each shelf; and two, we have stuff in there we bought over a year ago! That can’t be good.  The first plan, then, was to replace things on the shelves so we could see what we had when we opened the refrigerator door.  That proved tricky as you still end up with things in the back that could quite easily stay there forever unbeknown to anyone.  They hide out in the corners of your box, impossible to reach without crawling on your hands and knees, and bumping your head on the shelves to get to them.  Then, I’m convinced, those tricky little devils sit there laughing at you while dodging every attempt to grab them as you are looking up at the ceiling to stretch your arm to the back of the box.  I have declared war on the back of my refrigerator, but I’m not proud of it.

Next I gathered all the individually wrapped bits of food and tried to organize them into types – you know, meats, veggies, carbs, etc..  I ran into some issues here as I couldn’t recognize some of the packages and ended up just tossing them.  Don’t tell my wife.  I did make a donation, as an amends, to the starving children in foreign places I couldn’t pronounce out of guilt for tossing that moldy piece of pizza.

Finally, when I got to the refrigerator door stuff, OMG!!!  I think some people could live on our condiments for at least 5 years.  These things never get eaten up and some have actually been moved from refrigerator to refrigerator.  Its not a good thing,  I am sure.  I couldn’t decide what to do, as I don’t know what some of those bottles really are nor when we will need them for what kind of food.  When did we, as a nation, start making stuff to eat with other stuff to eat and not be clear on the lable when to combine this bottle of stuff with those other things to eat.  I get catsup and mustard………but I found other things for which I have no clue how to tell if they are good or bad.  Foregoing my corporate acumen, I resorted to exclusively smelling stuff, and making the “keep” or “go” decision for the organizational phase of my effort based solely on whether I flinched when I took a whif or not.

When it comes to cleanliness, I found some things actually start to chrystalize when you try to wipe off a refrigerator shelf with it.  Cold is a phenomenal state.  It spreads smells around, but clumps up liquid stuff with just as much stealth.  Amazing.  So I put away the spray bottles of cleaning fluid and resorted to good old hot water and dish soap.  Seems to work out pretty well so I’m sticking with that.

Butch Wife Tip #4

When approaching refrigerator management, be ready for a surprising adventure when you open your door.  If you can’t determine a cold package’s contents from sight or smell, throw it away.  If something has fuzz on it, don’t just scrape off the fuzz and eat it, throw it away.  And if something has been in the refrigerator for more than six months, send it to the National Institute of Health for possible scientific testing just in case you’ve discovered the next penicillin for our generation.

Julie  Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

Tags: , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34 other followers

%d bloggers like this: